PROFILED BY DE GROOTS MEDIAHow many restaurants can make this claim? At Little Tokyo, the same owner has been holding the fort since 1966. Michiko O’Brien still smiles and greets her customers in her colourful kimono as she takes their orders. Uncompromisingly authentic, Little Tokyo is fitted out in classic Japanese decor, with a beautiful natural wooden interior and hanging paper lanterns.
The restaurant is divided into two sections. The Sukiyaki House is the shoes-off dining area, where you sit on comfy cushions with your legs dangling beneath the low tables. This provides the traditional setting for meals of sukiyaki and shabu shabu, steaming hotpots prepared at the table with thin slices of meat and vegetables.
Teppanyaki House offers a more modern (only 200 years old!) style of Japanese dining. Guests (shoes on or off) perch on stools around a communal table with an iron grill at its centre, where live entertainment is provided by highly skilled chefs barbecuing the meat and seafood with dramatic bursts of flame and much theatre and good-natured joking. Zensai (entrees) are served in both dining areas and should be ordered liberally. The sushi and sashimi are excellent and there are good versions of standards like tempura king prawns, barbecued squid, unagi (smoked eel) and nizkana (sliced fish with zucchini, shallots, carrots, bean sprouts and soy sauce).